Review: Boss of the Chisholm Trail - Guy L. Maynard

Guy L. Maynard wrote thirteen stories starring red-headed, gunslinging trail boss Flame Burns for the pulp WILD WEST WEEKLY in 1936, ’37, and ’38. But Flame also starred in BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL, a Big Little Book published in 1939. Most of you are probably familiar with Big Little Books, those small, thick, chunky juvenile novels that featured text on the left-hand pages and illustrations on the right-hand pages. That wasn’t always the case—there are a couple of places in this book where text appears on both pages—but for the most part the books are about half as long as they appear to be, and the print is pretty big, so BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL is more of a novella than a novel.

The question is, did Maynard adapt it from any of his Flame Burns stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY? That certainly seems possible. Most of the Flame Burns pulp stories also feature Billy the Kid as a character, and in BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL, Flame meets Billy for the first time, suggesting that this Big Little Book may have been taken from “Trail Pardners”, Flame’s debut novelette in the February 29, 1936 issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. Not having a copy of that issue, I can’t check for sure.

But what about BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL, you ask? Is it any good? Well, I enjoyed it quite a bit, for whatever that’s worth. As the book opens, Flame has just arrived in Santa Fe with a trail herd he had to take over and bring in when the regular trail boss was killed. This is the first time Flame has acted as trail boss, but it won’t be the last. He soon meets the famous rancher known as “Old Man” Chisholm, whose bodyguard and closest ally is Billy the Kid. Chisholm hires Flame to ramrod a trail drive from the Texas Panhandle to Abilene.

This is as good a place as any to mention that Maynard totally mixes up Jesse Chisholm, who laid out the route that came to be known as the Chisholm Trail, and John Chisum, the New Mexico rancher who was both friend and enemy to Billy the Kid at different times. However, is strict historical accuracy all that important in a book like this? Probably not.

Flame sets out to deliver Chisholm’s cattle to Abilene, but trouble lurks along the way in the person of the evil Whiskey Dick Slavens and his gang of rustlers. Flame has a personal run-in with Slavens even before leaving Santa Fe, so the varmint has a grudge against our hero to start with. Stampedes and gunfights ensue as Flame tries to meet the challenges of his first real job as a trail boss.

Despite being aimed at a juvenile audience, BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL is no namby-pamby, “nobody dies” kid’s book. On the contrary, guns blaze a lot, and hombres both good and bad get ventilated on a regular basis. The violence may have been toned down a little, but this is a pretty hardboiled yarn. Obviously, kids in the Thirties were expected to be tough enough to take it. The story races along and comes to a satisfying conclusion.

My copy is missing the spine and is in fairly rough shape, but the text is all there and easy to read. The cover is truly ugly. The interior illustrations are by Ralph Hitchcock, and while most of them are pretty crude, some are not bad and do a good job of capturing the action. I’m not a collector or a regular reader of Big Little Books, although I read a lot of them as a kid when they were easier to find. But when one comes my way, I’m not going to hesitate to pick it up if it looks interesting.

I had read one of the later Flame Burns stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY and thought it was okay but nothing more than that. I think I actually enjoyed this version more. It’s an oddity, sure, but an entertaining one.

Review: Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin' - Cleve Endicott (Norman W. Hay) (Wild West Weekly, November 28, 1936)

I came across this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY on the Internet Archive, and since it features a novelette with the great title “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”, I decided to go ahead and read that yarn so I could post about it today. It’s the November 28, 1936 issue, and the cover is by R.G. Harris. I’ll read the rest of it and feature it as a Saturday Morning Western Pulp in a week or two.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Billy West/Circle J series in WILD WEST WEEKLY, it was the most prolific Western pulp series with more than 400 entries between 1927 and 1943, written by at least 15 different authors under the house-name Cleve Endicott. The protagonist is Billy West, the young owner of the Circle J cattle ranch in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains, along with his sidekicks, the colorful, grizzled old-timer Buck Foster and feisty, redheaded Joe Scott.

In “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”, it’s the day before the holiday and the Circle J’s Chinese cook Sing Lo is on his way back to the ranch with a buckboard full of supplies for the Thanksgiving feast when he interrupts a stagecoach robbery and is taken prisoner by the outlaws. Meanwhile, in town, Buck Foster competes in a turkey shoot to win a prize gobbler and runs afoul of some other hardcases. Unknown to any of our heroes, these two circumstances are connected and will soon lead them into a whirlwind of action.

In fact, this story is almost all action, but it’s well-written and Billy, Buck, Joe, and Sing Lo are very likable protagonists. Despite the thin plot, I found it to be a very enjoyable yarn. The actual author is Norman W. Hay, who wrote more of the Circle J stories than anyone else. If you’re a Western pulp fan and need something to do after your nap this afternoon (I assume everyone takes a nap on Thanksgiving, like I do), I can recommend reading “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”.